Dr. Janice Lovelace was the featured speaker this afternoon, October 24, 2021, at a joint meeting hosted by the Black Diamond Historical Society and South King County Genealogical Society, on Black Miners in the West.   The event was well attended with people from all over the United States who have an interest in the heritage of the Black miners who came west in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Notes from the meeting:  https://skcgs.groups.io/g/Society/message/1934  . People who live in South King County, especially on the eastern side are familiar with the coal mining communities of Newcastle, Renton, and Black Diamond; some may even remember the names of Franklin, Cedar Mountain and other towns from long ago. Franklin WA ~ Cemetery ~Abandoned Mining Town by vikisuzan, (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) I've had an interest in the mining operations at Franklin ever since I discovered the names of the 37 men who died in the mine fire of August 24, 1894.  That lead to other...

Attention: Canadian Space Aliens! Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay  Did your 19th century Canadian immigrants arrive via UFO?  Did they, by any chance, mention if Katherine/Katy/Kittie unknown maiden name was with them?   I've been searching for Kittie Kinney for twenty years with no success.  I won't go into the facts and assumptions in this particular ancestor; this blog has a different purpose. While it is easy to treat searches at Ancestry or Family Search as if we were doing routine U S research, we are probably overlooking much available material at those sites and definitely missing other sites that focus on Canada. It is always easier to filter your search by location thus eliminating the hundreds/thousands of results you might get.  Ancestry At Ancestry you can select only the Canadian records by going to the regular search dialogue box, choose "Collection Focus" and then "Canada".  You can further choose Census or Birth, Marriage, Death ...

This week the South King County Genealogical Society begins a new study group [1] , of the book Mastering Genealogical Proof , by Thomas W. Jones [2] . The first chapter, Genealogy's Standard of Proof , first considers What is Genealogy . I can't better Jones' measured prose, but here is why I do genealogy. Why? Solving Puzzles Doing the research is satisfying! When there is a gap in the timeline, finding the right record is like fitting in a puzzle piece! That bit of satisfaction keeps me at it, often far too late into the night. Especially when the family group or locality (or both) are unfamiliar, finding the records feels like getting to know that person and the time and place where they lived. The contrast in how the lives of some the folks in the family fall into a pattern, and those who bushwhack their own path, is often surprising.  Why? Putting Meat on the Bones So solving puzzles are fun, but genealogy is work, too. Aside from the little rewards, there is enormous...

Grumbles and Thanks  Online you will find both, as people discuss the new FamilySearch search interfaces, just in time for Family History Month. Change is always difficult! Fortunately they have created a new landing page to get users oriented.  New Landing Page In the image below, there is a circle around a big change, underlined one way to get back much of what you might miss from the old page, and pointed an arrow to a link to get a whole lot more help.  Circled: Birth or Death year - This can be a time-saver when you know only one date.  However, the underlined link is usually where you will start: MORE OPTIONS. MORE OPTIONS screen If you want Exact Search for any field, the arrow shows where to enable it. Usually this is only useful if you know precisely what you want to find.  The images above are the top of the new page. Scroll down just a bit, and there is more.  TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE SEARCHES on the left leads to a separate page called  Best prac...

  Image by  Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke  from  Pixabay   There is no better feeling in genealogy research than breaking through! Especially when the "wall" has been standing for a long time. I've been working on my son-in-law's tree since he gave me the information I needed to begin. The White side of his family was reasonably easy, but the Black side was full of roadblocks, and not just the big one before the 1870 US Census: slavery and the dreaded tick marks. Courtesy https://thenounproject.com/   Fortunately, I'm stubborn! I'm part of the Wikitree US Black Heritage project, and every month they run a contest called the Connecting Challenge . This has been a spur to get those connections made! And I very much wanted to connect Jason to his great-grandmother.  I knew her name, Rosalie Dubuclet , the name of her first husband, Amadee Alexander , and when he died, 1920. I knew roughly when she was born in Louisiana, but who were her parents? Whil...

 Collaboration is magic! Your own work, experience and inspiration combined with others who share an interest, create more than seems possible. See  The Magic of Collaboration (and Wikitree)  for more about that. But how to begin?  First, collaborate with relatives Pick up the phone! Set up an interview Write a letter Send images, information and questions, through the mail or email, or shared documents such as Google Drive Ask them to share images and questions too Invite them to your Ancestry or MyHeritage tree Share a timeline for your family Next, collaborate with DNA matches Start with the closest and largest matches, and put them into your tree Use the site tools to figure out who they are (shared matches, dots) Use the site messaging system; give them your email and some information • As you learn one site, upload to another, 1, 2, 3! • Sometimes you will need to build their trees for them; invite them to the tree • Keep sharing as you find more information • ...